Teaching Pronunciation
in the EFL Classroom
Basic Concepts:
Pronunciation is an area of great difficulty for the
untrained EFL teacher. But, with a little training and
practice you can facilitate the improvement of your
student's pronunciation almost as well as the seasoned
professional. For our purposes here, "Pronunciation"
will include the instruction of Stress, Rhythm and
Intonation.
Everyone is familiar with the old jokes about Asian
students ordering "Flied Lice" and, in fact, such
pronunciation problems persist today. To a large extent,
EFL students have problems with pronunciation and stress
primarily due to that fact that their native tongue may
not have that particular sound (their native grammar may
even prohibit making that sound) and the absence in many
languages of "consonant clusters" (strings of
consonants).
When studying and teaching pronunciation you will need
to learn to use a respelling system to help students get
the feel of the language. Some people advocate the use
of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but a
problem with that system is that few students know it
and you will spend an inordinate amount of time teaching
it to them only to have them move on to another teacher
- who doesn't use it. Additionally, there are at least
ten other major phonetic systems that appear in
dictionaries and pronunciation and listening books.
A
simple system is used in the listening book Sound
Advice and in the pronunciation book Sound
Advantage - both authored by Stacy A. Hagen. You
will see this system used in some of the downloads
farther down this page. A simple system that is
intuitive and easy to use is critical to your success in
helping your students succeed in speaking in a
comprehensible way.
EFL
teachers are all too familiar with students that
approach them and speak clear complete sentences of
something that is not even remotely understandable.
A student may well have a good understanding of English and
an excellent vocabulary, but if their pronunciation is
so poor that they can not communicate - all is lost.
That is, until you come on the scene!
Expanded
Concepts:
Students
NEED to hear natural fast relaxed pronunciation as we
speak it every day - not a carefully over-articulated
overly-pronounced one-word-by-one-word phrasing of
sentences. Speaking too slowly and too emphatically -
is a common characteristic of the untrained teacher.
Speaking
unnaturally hurts your students for two reasons. One,
they will imitate your speaking style and speak
unnaturally too, and two, they will not recognize and
understand natural rapid speech when they hear it.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't slow your speech down a
bit to help your students get some basic ideas - but it
does mean that you should speak naturally most of the
time. It also means that you need to TEACH them what
natural speech sounds like. There is some evidence that
says that if students don't speak naturally - they won't
recognize normal speech when they hear it.
Consider the following:
My name is Fred really sounds like Mi naeh miz
Fred.
How much is it? really sounds like How muh chi
zit?
The
idea of the end of one word connecting to the beginning
of the next word is called "Linking" and there is some
information about it at the bottom of this page.
If
you habitually speak slowly and over-enunciate your
students will listen for How much is it? and
won't understand when they hear the normal speech sounds
of How muh chi zit? The skilled EFL teacher
instructs her students in these differences - how to
pronounce them - and how to listen for them.
Consider:
Sue wants to get a better water heater - say it
quickly in normal speech and see what it really
sounds like.
It
will sound more like: Sue wuhnstuh gettuh bedder
wadder heeder.
The
idea of words sticking together and some sounds becoming
smaller is called "Reduction" and there is more
information about reductions at the end of this page.
There is, of course, some variation by country and
region in how we speak - learn to use respelling to help
your students get it right.
It
is important that you get this concept. Untrained
teachers will say, "I don't speak like that!" But they
do - you do - everyone does.
What about Respelling?
Should you memorize and use the International Phonetic
Alphabet? No, your students won't usually know it. Look
in a variety of books and adopt a simple method similar
to the one used above. Will your students confuse
"respelling" with the correct spelling of words? No,
not if you just tell them, "It sounds like this"
while pointing at the respelling. Students intuitively
"get it." Must you respell absolutely correctly? No,
but be as accurate as you can. The way you respell will
be different from someone else - as we all have some
minor variations in our pronunciation.
Word and Sentence Stress
Add to
respelling the notion of word and sentence stress. Many
EFL students around the world will have different stress
patterns in their language.
When you pronounce words with two or more syllables -
one syllable will be stressed more than the others.
Until you practice a bit - you may have trouble hearing
stress because it is such a natural part of a
native-speaker's speech. Here is what to listen for:
Tone, length of time, loudness.
For
example:
Banana - sounds like buh NAEH nuh
If
you listen carefully the middle syllable has a slightly
higher tone, lasts longer, and is slightly louder.
Thai students, for example will say: buh naeh NUH
Sentences will have similar stress patterns that
students need to learn, and respelling can help them
with that too. Some words are not so important to hear
- and are reduced in time, loudness and tone. Some are
more important and are louder, longer, and have a higher
tone. The important words are called "Content Words" -
they are nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Less important words are called "Function Words" and are
pronouns, helping verbs, conjunctions, and
prepositions. These rules are not ALWAYS true, but are
good general guidelines.
Example: My name is Bob when written showing
sentence stress sounds/looks more like: my NAME is
BOB.
Don't overdo word and sentence stress - it is important
to speak naturally when teaching your students stress.
You, after all, want your students to speak naturally
too.
Think about sentence stress a bit like this: When you
talk on a mobile or cell phone - you often don't hear
every word - and you don't need to. You get the "gist"
of the sentence from hearing the important words. Those
are the words that are stressed in a sentence.
Word and sentence stress takes a lot of practice. But
the practice is well worthwhile as your students will
benefit greatly from your efforts. Don't worry about
getting it slightly wrong. It is more important that
you just try it and work with it and develop your skills
with it. It WILL make you a much better teacher in the
long run.
There is a
lot to study here - as there is a lot to learn. The
suggested readings are ranked in the order of difficulty
and the order in which they are best read:
Linking
- a Word document
Pronunciation Notes - a Word document
Links to Important Readings on Pronunciation:
Word Stress
Sentence Stress
More on Linking
Kent University
Phonetics Resource Page
The British Council Pronunciation Page
Once you have conquered pronunciation - it is time to
move on!
